Scanners (e.g., a still image acquisition device such as a video frame grabber, web camera, traditional flatbed scanner, and so on) may be used to input a variety of different information into a computer. For example, a scanner may be used to scan and analyze an image in some way, such as to capture images and text from a document to be saved on a computer. The computer may then further process the image, such as to perform optical character recognition (OCR) such that text in the image may be edited by a user, crop the image, reduce “red eye”, and so on.
Traditional techniques that were employed by a computer to receive acquired data from a scanner, however, involved control that was centralized at the computer. For example, a traditional application that was to receive an image from a scanner dictated to the scanner the particular settings that were to be used to capture the image. These settings are then applied by the scanner when performing the scan. Therefore, this technique forced the user to first interact with the computer to provide the settings and then with the scanner to perform a scan (e.g., to position a document), which could be frustrating and inefficient.